TAMPA, Fla. -- Paul Pasqualoni is doing his best to put a positive spin on this stuff that is so hard to digest. The UConn coach knows this is not filet mignon he's trying to put down. It's not even Salisbury steak. It is a meal of broken glass, tearing up the insides, but it is a meal he must eat.

There is nothing else in the cupboard.

Saturday night's 13-6 loss against South Florida at Raymond James Stadium was not UConn's worst loss of the season. That distinction will belong to the comically bad game two weeks ago at Syracuse no matter what happens in the remaining three games.

Saturday night was the night that any remaining hope disappeared into the abyss.

Even Pasqualoni seems resigned to the fact, if not in words then certainly in appearance. The shoulders slumped a bit afterward. The positive words didn't contain the same belief.

"Too many bad things happened," he said. "It's difficult to win close games like this when you keep having self-inflicted wounds. We just have to go back and keep working at it. I'm proud of the way these guys fight and continue to fight. I'm not worried about effort. They give effort every game. They need to keep doing that and I know they will."

Maybe, but with the prospect of finishing the year winless in the Big East, how long can the Huskies really trick themselves into thinking things will change? There is a difference between faith and delusion.

Every available piece of evidence points to the Huskies being a bad team. That is what they are, simple fact. Effort and focus and belief are all great things to a coach, but the guy who calls himself a UConn fan doesn't care much about those things.

He wants results that haven't been there. They won't suddenly appear.

"It's frustrating," quarterback Chandler Whitmer said. "It's crazy to put up some of the numbers we get and then score only six points and lose. We have to keep working at it."

All respect to Whitmer, who has proved he might just be the toughest of the Huskies, but those words are becoming tiresome. Adding to the frustration is the fact that they are also true. What other option have the Huskies not exhausted?

Some of what has gone on with this team is mind-boggling. Unless they beat Pittsburgh on Friday night, the Huskies will lose five straight Big East games for the first time. And let's be honest, UConn has had some horrific offenses since it joined the league in 2004.

None has been as horrific as this one.

No sense talking about the awful running game. That path has been trodden. There are more unimaginable things to consider.

UConn has scored three touchdowns in its last 17 quarters. Three in 255 minutes of action. That's a touchdown every 85 minutes. It has scored one touchdown in its last 11 quarters. One. That is an unmatched level of futility.

The Huskies had a 16-play drive Saturday night. Coaches pray for such things. It chewed almost eight minutes off the clock. The drive looked like actual offense. It was nearly a thing of beauty.

Until it resulted in a 37-yard field goal. Drives that long often stall near the goal line. This one stalled at the 20. It summed up the offense in microcosm perfectly.

The Huskies don't even score by accident anymore. They average 8.25 points in Big East games. How is that even possible?

And there's this frightening nugget: Since the Sept. 29 game against Buffalo, UConn's last victory, the Huskies have been outscored 59-3 in the second half. They average less than one point per second half in Big East games. Scarier? They averaged zero points in the second half of Big East games until they secured a field goal early in the second half Saturday night.

The poor defense. It allows an average of just more than a touchdown and extra point in the second halves of league games and loses. A one-legged dog has more support.

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